Feelings of injustice and political engagement are often connected, sometimes unquestioningly; the idea being that one generates the other along a sort of continuum. This article examines the links that surface between moral feelings – as a specific form of political emotional experience – and engagement, starting with a decentring of current Western democratic contexts and a shift towards coercive or authoritarian contexts, using field research from the Middle East. Clearly, the emotional intensification linked to violent political experiences must be taken into account, but this emotional intensification does not alone establish any necessary continuity between the shock of certain experiences, a feeling of injustice, and engagement. Activist articulations of a feeling of injustice are in fact three-layered: expression of a feeling fed by lived or transmitted experiences, a reference to ideological frameworks that both legitimise their forms of engagement and help give meaning to their situation, and inscription within a general moral argument. Available on: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/N5MXBY8JH9GENACAFTYT/full?target=10.1080/03906701.2024.2335151